2026 Update
10 January 2026
Whoa boy does a lot change in six years… Covid, the rise of LLMs, buying a house, getting married, and starting at and leaving two different companies.
The last time I wrote a post was about three months before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and about five months from when I closed on my current home. The latter of those two is probably the biggest reason why I have neglected this site. Although I will say I did migrate the site over from the over-engineered monstrosity that it once was to a jekyll generated static site. Overall though I have not even come close to writing another post because of how much work I have done on the turn of the century (the 20th, not the most recent one) house that I closed on in May of 2020. I could probably write a whole book about the renovations which aren’t even done yet but I’ll leave you with the tl;dr, old house woes and pesky termites. That, along with just life in general, took up nearly all of the time I had outside of my job to work on things like this site.
Speaking of work, at the beginning of 2022 I decided it was time to move on from ASI and work on something that was more of an internet scale, you know distributed systems, microservices and such. So I started a job search and ended up accepting a senior software engineer position at Mural which, with its virtual whiteboard product for collaboration, exploded during the pandemic. Unfortunately, that was very short lived, about three months, as the world started to open up again. Companies began returning to the office and the demand for tools like Mural faded with it. So I, along with about a third of the company, found myself without a job. Thankfully, after not too long, I ended up landing another senior software position at Toast. I spent a wonderful two and a half years helping restaurants integrate with third party ordering providers like UberEats, DoorDash, GrubHub and Google. I worked on services receiving millions of requests a day and learned a whole lot. Sadly, I was caught up in another layoff at the end of June in 2025 and have been looking for a job ever since.
Like a roller coaster ride, my layoff dovetailed into my wedding which I can honestly say was the happiest day of my life. We had a smallish ceremony just outside of Glacier National Park and got to spend several days celebrating and enjoying the wonders that Glacier has to offer.
After looking back at the last six years, I now want to look to the future and what this year might hold. I want to be more purposeful about that by creating some statements of intention as well as some goals to cement them:
- I want to engage my mind with new ideas and ways of thinking as well as learn to better express my own.
- Read 12 books for pleasure
- Write 6 blog posts
You probably now see the “why now” of this blog post. It is a goal of mine to write and read more. I feel like I may have become a little complacent and insular over the last six years. I don’t want to be too hard on myself but outside of work I think I have become intellectually stagnant and I want to break out of that.
- I want to know where the software industry is headed and how secure my career is over the next decade.
- Read 50 software related academic papers with a focus on LLMs
- Read 4 software related books
Of course no blog post these days would be complete without the mention of artificial intelligence. LLMs are both a revelatory technology and possibly an existential threat to my career. I have spent the last six months yo-yoing between believing that LLMs will just be another tool in the toolbox and wondering if I need to find another career. It has really been a confounding and tumultuous time in my life. Hopefully, with some better knowledge on the subject I can be better equipped to chart my path forward.
If you have gotten this far, thank you so much for reading! It really means a lot and feel free to drop me a line if any of this resonated with you or you want to discuss further. And as always, happy hacking!
Nick Staggs
Just your typical coffee addicted software engineer. Exploring the intricacies and whimsies of the web, one cup at a time.
2026 Update
10 January 2026
Whoa boy does a lot change in six years… Covid, the rise of LLMs, buying a house, getting married, and starting at and leaving two different companies.
The last time I wrote a post was about three months before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and about five months from when I closed on my current home. The latter of those two is probably the biggest reason why I have neglected this site. Although I will say I did migrate the site over from the over-engineered monstrosity that it once was to a jekyll generated static site. Overall though I have not even come close to writing another post because of how much work I have done on the turn of the century (the 20th, not the most recent one) house that I closed on in May of 2020. I could probably write a whole book about the renovations which aren’t even done yet but I’ll leave you with the tl;dr, old house woes and pesky termites. That, along with just life in general, took up nearly all of the time I had outside of my job to work on things like this site.
Speaking of work, at the beginning of 2022 I decided it was time to move on from ASI and work on something that was more of an internet scale, you know distributed systems, microservices and such. So I started a job search and ended up accepting a senior software engineer position at Mural which, with its virtual whiteboard product for collaboration, exploded during the pandemic. Unfortunately, that was very short lived, about three months, as the world started to open up again. Companies began returning to the office and the demand for tools like Mural faded with it. So I, along with about a third of the company, found myself without a job. Thankfully, after not too long, I ended up landing another senior software position at Toast. I spent a wonderful two and a half years helping restaurants integrate with third party ordering providers like UberEats, DoorDash, GrubHub and Google. I worked on services receiving millions of requests a day and learned a whole lot. Sadly, I was caught up in another layoff at the end of June in 2025 and have been looking for a job ever since.
Like a roller coaster ride, my layoff dovetailed into my wedding which I can honestly say was the happiest day of my life. We had a smallish ceremony just outside of Glacier National Park and got to spend several days celebrating and enjoying the wonders that Glacier has to offer.
After looking back at the last six years, I now want to look to the future and what this year might hold. I want to be more purposeful about that by creating some statements of intention as well as some goals to cement them:
- I want to engage my mind with new ideas and ways of thinking as well as learn to better express my own.
- Read 12 books for pleasure
- Write 6 blog posts
You probably now see the “why now” of this blog post. It is a goal of mine to write and read more. I feel like I may have become a little complacent and insular over the last six years. I don’t want to be too hard on myself but outside of work I think I have become intellectually stagnant and I want to break out of that.
- I want to know where the software industry is headed and how secure my career is over the next decade.
- Read 50 software related academic papers with a focus on LLMs
- Read 4 software related books
Of course no blog post these days would be complete without the mention of artificial intelligence. LLMs are both a revelatory technology and possibly an existential threat to my career. I have spent the last six months yo-yoing between believing that LLMs will just be another tool in the toolbox and wondering if I need to find another career. It has really been a confounding and tumultuous time in my life. Hopefully, with some better knowledge on the subject I can be better equipped to chart my path forward.
If you have gotten this far, thank you so much for reading! It really means a lot and feel free to drop me a line if any of this resonated with you or you want to discuss further. And as always, happy hacking!